


Competition:  Coffee vs Tea

by Cap_Streeter



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Coffee, F/M, Gen, Tea, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, There is a Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cap_Streeter/pseuds/Cap_Streeter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like all things it started innocently enough..." Supposed to be a fluffy story inspired by stories where Spock and Uhura drink coffee and tea. Still a little fluffy but with some humor. So it is flufmor.</p>
<p>Also inspired by some other far more insightful person who said, that these people who got into Starfleet are top of their classes.  Then all the people who were chosen to be on Enterprise were the top of those classes.  Then these particular people were so good they rose to the top to be put in charge of the ship.  So these are all Type A, driven, alpha type people, competitive geniuses, who were probably always right.</p>
<p>At the same time they are professionals who would respect their fellow crew members particular fields of expertise. So in my mind they'd just get into horrible arguments about well ridiculous things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Competition:  Coffee vs Tea

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Don't own. Written because it seems that in every story there seems to be some point where Spock and Uhura share tea or coffee acting as a bonding moment. Also no beta, so if any mistakes or just awkwardness let me know and will correct them.
> 
> Some thoughts on tea:
> 
> "If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you." - William Gladstone
> 
> "I view tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an en-genderer of effeminancy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age. Thus he makes that miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer instead of making tea." — William Cobbett in Cottage Economy (1821).
> 
> Some thoughts on coffee:
> 
> "No one can understand the truth until one drinks of coffee's frothy goodness." - Sheik Abd al-Qadir
> 
> "Coffee leads men to trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water." -The Women's Petition Against Coffee (1674)

Like all things it started innocently enough, just the two them that indulged in this ritual. It continued on Enterprise, they would take a break and head down to the mess hall. He would prepare tea and she would prepare her coffee, they would claim a table in the near deserted mess hall, and just sit there. Occasionally there would be conversation but it was mainly quiet, just the moment of being together was enough. It was simple, relaxing; straight forward; the essentials of their relationship in 30 minutes.  
  
There was no major change that started this strange competition. There were only ripples, the first one being that the Captain happened to walk into the cafeteria a month into their ritual.  
  
"Hey, you two," said Kirk, his eyes darting between the two officers, in confusion.  
  
"Greetings, Captain," said Spock.  
  
"What are you two doing here?"  
  
"Taking our daily break," she said.  
  
"Wait, what? Really?" said the man.  
  
Both members of the senior staff matched their captain's look of confusion with their own.  
  
"I know this goes against the seminar Yeoman Rand just hosted.  But you're not off having a quickie?"  
  
Uhura nearly spit her coffee out, instead she started choking.  
  
"No Captain," said Spock still confused. "Quickie I assume is a slang term, one that I have not heard before. What does it mean?"  
  
James Kirk took a second to think about it. "A really fast sex act," said the Captain.  
  
"Captain, I assure you, we would never neglect our duties in that way."

"Well why not? I thought for the past month that you two had been doing just that. Hell if you guys are just doing this everyday," he said gesturing to their mugs, "Use the Captain's Ready room."  
  
In the long run it may have been better that everyone thought they were sneaking off to have quickies. The next day Scotty walked into the ready room and saw the two them sitting there.  
  
"Commander, Lieutenant" he said looking between the two of them, "I heard from the Captain about your breaks and well the rumor is that that you actually have loose tea and tea bags Commander."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
"Well would it be fine if I joined you?"  
  
Spock looked over at Uhura, she shrugged her shoulders. It was Spock's tea not hers.  
  
"That would be fine," said Spock.  
  
The engineer smiled and went fishing thru the cabinets until he came upon a mug. He filled it with hot water and joined the two at the table. Spock slid the box of tea bags over to the man. The Scot ripped open the bag and put it into the mug, the steam rising from the cup. He put the cup up to his nose and took a long sniff.  
  
"You cannot get a decent cup of tea from any replicator, an old family saying," he said. "However is there any cream?"  
  
Spock looked at the man like he had just asked if he would like to make out with a Klingon, well Uhura could tell, he had that look.  
  
"I think you should try the replicatior," she said.  
  
"Well guess I'll have to pick up a cow at the next port," said Scotty. The man took a sip. "Eh, Commander you have no idea how wonderful this is. This takes me back to afternoons at my Gram's. She was a tough woman but always loving. I used to have an ancestor a great, great, great, well you get the idea, grandfather a thousand years in the past, he was a strange man, name of Arthur and English," the Scotsman made a face equivalent to eating a lime when he mentioned this part of his heritage. "Anyways he was known in my family for insisting on tea time. So it traveled down the ages. He would then tell these outrageous stories of hitchhiking the galaxy and never getting a proper cup of tea. Thus the old family saying of you cannot get a decent cup of tea from a replicator…even though there was no such technology back then."  
  
A look of a troubling thought came across the Scotsman face, which he seemed to quickly dismiss.  
  
"The saying probably changed over the years. Besides, strange sort of man, always carried a towel around and said he could fly. This just is nice, ya know?" said the engineer with a smile.  
  
Uhura smiled and Spock seemed like he was amused in his own way. They both thought at the time, that it might not be a bad thing for some people to join them. So they did.  The fourth person was Sulu, once he heard from the Scotsman about Spock's tea, the man started joining them. He took his tea with a slice of lemon squeezed in then the whole wedge would fall to the bottom. There was no story about a slightly mad ancestor, just that he worked at a tea house during secondary school, and tea was a nice break for him.  
  
Uhura felt for some reason outnumbered by the three men drinking hot tea. Luckily Jim Kirk, something she never thought she would think, came around. He noticed after a week how most of his senior staff disappeared into his ready room and joined them. Turned out he enjoyed coffee. He liked the Kenyan beans which were in fact from her cousin's plantation; who lovingly sent more than a few pounds of coffee, just before Uhura shipped out, to act as a private stash.  
  
Kirk unlike her took his coffee with cream and two spoonfuls of sugar. At first it slightly disturbed the communications officer. He was covering up the natural flavors of the coffee. She probably would have kept the beverage away from the captain if the argument had not come up. "The discussion", as Spock referred to it later, when he could tell that she was slightly annoyed about what was discussed.  It was an argument.    
  
Uhura could not pinpoint who exactly started it but she was fairly certain it was Scotty, the tea drinker. Spock and her were engaged in what she thought of as foreplay. They would sit there and look at one another over their mugs. Just holding each others gaze, she would watch as he would slowly drink, his mouth opening, his firm jaw moving his features just the tiniest bit, the liquid going past his lips, the pleasure of the taste in his eyes, past his tongue, down his throat, making his Adam's apple move in a manner that made her think of when he would be taking large gulps of air while he hovered over her. The liquid going to his core, his firm core which she could better appreciate as he mov—  
  
"BULLOCKS!"  
  
Uhura turned her head to see what the hell had just interrupted her moment of peace, well not peace, but her moment. It was Scotty and Kirk arguing the merits of something.  
  
"Come on!  It's the far superior drink, there's more caffeine, it has a better taste."  
  
"Really a better taste is that why you try to cover it with two packets of sugar and cream?"  
  
"Everyone takes their coffee a different way. It's just the better drink."  
  
And so it had begun.  Uhura would not care to relive the details; Spock had done it enough for her. But the facts were these. Scotty and Jim continued to argue when the Captain had said something that caused Sulu to jump in. Kirk then somehow got Uhura to join in the conversation, where she listed her rational, logical, perfect good points. Which Spock then had to come in and tell her were emotionally based and not factual. The argument stopped after that point when all three men currently not in a relationship with her, saw Uhura's look.  
  
Later when asked about it, she would wonder why she felt so emotional about the stupid debate, and would blame getting caught up in the moment. The next day everything seemed back to normal. But then Sulu and Scotty started talking about the rituals of making tea. Sulu just casually mentioned that tea, unlike coffee was calming but stimulating at the same time. Uhura sipping her mug, narrowed her eyes, and then heard Spock agree with the clearly incorrect comment. Her fingers tightened about her mug. She then parroted back what Spock had said to her the day before and the underlying tension was back. He started it, said a voice in her head that was reminiscent of her at five years old.  
  
The next day McCoy had joined the five of them for the break. Kirk evidently was trying to build their ranks, since the good doctor was decidedly a coffee drinker.  
  
"Sugar?"  
  
"I'm sweet enough, Jim," said the medical doctor, who sprinkled cinnamon on top of his drink.  
  
He asked Uhura if she would possibly make it with chicory, the look she shot the southern gent made him hold up his hands and back away slowly with his cup. Still, the competition was now evenly matched, three against three.     
  
Spock and McCoy had found medical articles listing the merits and negatives of their respective sides, using those in arguements.  Sulu who had a talent of art, had taken to drawing grotesque cartoons depicting one in the according to the caption, "THROES OF THOSE IN THE PAIN OF THE EVIL COFFEE WITHDRAWL!"  Uhura managed to get her cousin to send a few more pounds of coffee.  Kirk requisitioned an espresso machine for the ready room, and then the tea box suddenly disappeared.  That's when Scotty rewired the ship so that it recognized his specific genetic markers, meaning the Captain would only have cold showers.  That went on for a fortnight, until the tea box magically showed back up.       
  
Still there was one last senior officer who had yet to join them in their break. Everyday Kirk and Sulu would encourage Chekov to join them in their break, both men promising to brew him the perfect cup of caffeine.  
  
Finally one day the young Russian man joined the group. Both groups looked at the youngest member of the crew expectantly. Uhura wondered if he knew that by his choosing of either drink he declared the winner.  
  
"So, what would you like lad?" asked the smiling Scotsman.  
  
The six senior members waited with bated breath.  
  
The young man looked at both groups of people, the two choices displayed and took a deep breath. "Is there any hot chocolate?"  
  
-End


End file.
